How did life begin on Earth? It’s one of the greatest and most ancient mysteries in all of science — and the clues to solving it are all around us. Biologists have sometimes imagined evolutionary history as a recorded “tape of life” that might turn out differently if it were replayed again and again.

In this episode of The Joy of Why podcast, Steven Strogatz speaks with two researchers inspecting different parts of the tape. First, hear from the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Jack Szostak, who explores how a boiling pool laced with cyanide could have given rise to essential life elements like RNA and DNA. Then hear from Betül Kaçar, a paleogeneticist and astrobiologist who resurrects ancient genes to learn how they helped evolve the processes essential to modern life.

“If you think about it, life’s origins and early evolution created the blueprints for everything complex around us. We are interested in understanding that blueprint.”

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.

Read the transcript